When someone phones me on my iPhone, and they don't want people to see their number, they show up in my Phone app as 'Blocked'. I (and several of my iPhone-using friends) wrongly assumed this meant the caller was a blacklisted spammer, with non-hilarious consequences.

As it turns out, where the Phone app says 'Blocked', what they really mean is (in UK English at least) 'Withheld'.

Does that distinction make sense to you Americans, or does 'Blocked' imply 'Withheld' to you? I and my friends have missed important calls through this (I've ignored rather than answered incoming 'Blocked' calls, until I called O2 to complain and they explained what it really meant).

Wow, where have you been, do you live on an island or something? Oh...wait...

Blocked (withheld) means that the caller either has "caller id blocking" as it's called here, which means they have requested that their number not be shown, or that there is just some technical problem/reason with retrieving the number. Some cell (mobile) phones/systems don't "transmit" the number, not so much anymore but in early cells it was more prevalent.

Sure, I now know that's what it stands for, but how is the user supposed to guess that the phone app that says "Blocked" means "This caller has 'blocked' your access to their number" rather than the more obvious "This call has been blocked", as in ad blocking and all the rest of the apps that block things for you, the recipient of data/calls?

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